Rebuilding from flood in Nashville all but complete

Sunday

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Music City has made a remarkable recovery from the 1,000-year flood that devastated the area nine months ago.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Music City has made a remarkable recovery from the 1,000-year flood that devastated the area nine months ago.

The last major music venue affected by the flood, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, reopened on New Year's Day with an appearance by violinist Itzhak Perlman.

The Grand Ole Opry House, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the Gaylord Opryland Resort, the Tennessee Titan's LP Field and other flooded sites have been operational for months.

"You can't fathom how . . . deep the water was in here, no pun intended," said Jimmy Cahill, a waiter at the Cascades restaurant inside the massive conservatorylike Gaylord Opryland Resort, holding his hand well above his head.

Today there is no evidence that the hotel was filled with more than 10 feet of water, and it's that way throughout the city, which pulled together to erase the ravages of the flood.

"The main story is the response by the citizens of Nashville," said Nashville Mayor Karl Dean.

Dean's office is decorated with inspirational flood-related posters such as "Play On" which shows a silhouette of a singer with a guitar and microphone facing the downtown skyline, knee-deep in floodwater.

"There are still people not in their homes, but you've got to be pretty proud of how our city reacted," Dean said.

The outside help the city received was greatly appreciated, he said.

"I give (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) high marks for what they did here. But people here also took ownership of our own problem. We had thousands of volunteers in the street helping out almost immediately."

More than 88,000 volunteer hours have donated to recovery projects after the flood, and more than $8.6 million donated to flood-relief efforts.

One of the big reasons the effort was successful was Hands On Nashville, the nonprofit which helped coordinate flood relief, directing the huge number of volunteers to where their help could be used most efficiently, Dean said.

When a church group or other organization, or a single individual wanted to help, Hands On Nashville directed them to the spot where sandbagging, debris removal or other efforts were under way.

And even before the last of the cleanup was done, a marketing effort, telling would-be visitors that the city still wanted them, was kicked into high gear.

The flooding happened just a month before one of the city's biggest annual events, the Country Music Association Music Festival. Many of the festival's venues were flooded - but the show still went on.

In fact, Dean said, the music festival was the most successful in history, generating $2.6 million in profits, which were split among local schools and the flood-relief effort. "The country music industry also stepped up in a big way," he said.

Among the many stars to help was Garth Brooks, who held nine sold-out shows to benefit flood relief, Dean said.

The Grand Ole Opry, the world's longest-running radio program, moved to several venues while the flooded Opry House was being restored, never missing a performance.

"The Opry building flooded on Sunday (May) 2nd, the waters continued rising on Monday, and our next show was scheduled on Tuesday," said Dan Rogers, media-relations manager for the Opry.

That show was moved to the undamaged Nashville War Memorial Auditorium.

"Marty Stuart opened that show, and both our U.S. senators attended," Rogers said.

Rogers recalled meeting one family visiting from Texas who attended that show.

"They said, 'We always wanted to come to the Opry, and we would have been heartbroken if there wasn't a show.'

"That night ended with the whole cast singing Will the Circle Be Unbroken. And that's the song we opened with when the curtain went up when we reopened the Opry House Sept. 28," Rogers said. It took "virtually around-the-clock work" to get the Opry House reopened so soon, he said.

"Fifty years from now, people will look back and say 'That was an incredible moment in Opry history,'" he said.

"When that curtain went up, it felt like not just country music was back but Nashville was back, too."

sstephens@dispatch.com

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